


Solace

by Jae



Category: Deadwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jae/pseuds/Jae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This night a child is born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solace

The store was silent when Sol left it.

 

Not two hours ago he'd have bought this quiet at any price. Almost any price, at any rate. Not two hours ago the noise of the town had rattled and rocked against the windows, the usual noise of buying and selling, fervent and feverish the way it always was at night. Sol should have been used to it, and he was, but this night it seemed louder somehow, as if the noise were trying to smother the screams cutting through it, the screams of a woman laboring almost to death.

 

Almost, Sol had said to himself, over and over, that magic word, and then the screams stopped just a few minutes before the town's noise stilled. Every night this hush fell down over Deadwood, sudden and heavy like a drunk falling sodden from his chair to the floor, and Sol should have been used to it. He should have been used to it, and he was, but this night the silence seemed lighter somehow, like a blanket carefully drawn up over someone's face.

 

It was the safest time of day or night in Deadwood, this brief period after the night's carousing had finished and before the day's work had begun. Still, Sol found himself drawing back from the door, straightening an already neat shelf, busying himself with nothing at all instead of going out to the street to see if he could offer assistance, or comfort, or whatever might be needed out in the dead stillness of this night. Stupid, he told himself, he was being stupid, and then he blew out his candle and went out looking for something to make himself feel useful.

 

When Sol came back the store was almost as he'd left it. Just above the steady creak of the floorboards he heard a faint jagged sound repeated over and over again, as if someone were trying desperately to make as little noise as possible. If a silence could be said to be painful, this one was, and Sol closed the door behind himself and said, "Sit down, Seth, and put a flame to that candle."

 

The candle flickered obediently, but Seth stayed on his feet, braced in front of the counter, not leaning against it but looking as if he'd like to. He looked at Sol and didn't say anything, and Sol was tempted to see how long Seth could stand like that, stiff and still, but suddenly he felt the weight of the long sleepless night drop over him and he threw himself down into a chair.

 

"Helena," Sol said. "Helena Marie."

 

Seth shifted, like he'd felt the words more than heard them, and then said, "And is she ..."

 

"She's fine," Sol said. "Healthy, and pretty, they tell me, as these things go."

 

"And is ..."

 

Sol was tempted again to see how long Seth could bear the silence without finishing his question, but he'd known Seth a long time, long enough to know Seth could bear it longer than he could himself. "Her mother isn't as fine, but she'll live, so they say. It was a hard birth."

 

"Hard ..." Seth said, his voice soft and wondering, as if he'd never heard the word before, as if he weren't sure what it meant.

 

"Yes, hard," Sol said. He knew what the word meant. "It was Trixie who told me, and you can imagine what she's seen in her life to call hard."

 

"Trixie ..." Seth's voice still had that same strange distant sound, as if they were both of them in some dream Seth wouldn't remember the next day. "She'll have been of great use ... I'm thankful Trixie was there."

 

Seth could afford to be thankful for it. Seth hadn't seen her when she'd come out, just after the screaming had stopped but before the child was born. Sol had, though, had looked for her as soon as he left the store. When he'd seen her he'd taken off running, catching up to her as she turned to go back inside, her arms full of linen glowing white in the moonlight. She'd pulled away as he touched her arm.

 

"I can't," she hissed before Sol could say anything. The face she turned up to him was blurred, and what shocked him wasn't the blood, smeared around her forehead where she would have pushed her hair away, but the two tracks cutting clean and wet through the grime on her cheeks.

 

"Can I -- what can I do?" Sol said, and Trixie had laughed a little, tight and choked.

 

"Not a fucking thing you can do for anyone tonight." Sol looked away, just for a moment, and he heard Trixie draw a long jagged breath before she slid her hand into his. "We can't none of us do nothing for her. Even the doc says it's out of his hands now but at least he was trying, at least there was something --"

 

"I'm sure it helps her to have you," Sol said.

 

"She -- she says it's easier, when I'm there." Trixie laughed again, that strained sound. "I reckon she knows you can trust a whore to have seen a fucking lifetime's worth of labor, one way or another."

 

"She trusts you," Sol had said, and Trixie's laugh cut off suddenly.

 

"God help her," she'd said, and turned away from him. Before she yanked her hand away she squeezed his, tightly, her palm small and hard inside his own. With anyone other than Trixie, he wouldn't have known whether she was offering comfort, or trying to find it. With Trixie he hadn't a moment of doubt.

 

Now he closed his hand tightly over nothing as Seth spoke again, his voice setting Sol's skin on edge. He started to take a deep breath, to damp down the anger kindling in him, but then he looked at Seth and let his breath out fast, a harsh sound against Seth's calm bloodless voice.

 

"A girl ... Helena Marie," Seth said. Sol closed his eyes. "It's a fine name, Helena Marie."

 

"Yes," Sol said. He looked at Seth. "Helena Marie Ellsworth."

 

Seth looked back at him, half a smile frozen on his face. "That's what they're calling her," Sol said. "That's what everyone will call her, Helena Marie Ellsworth. As you say, it's a fine name."

 

Slouched in his chair, Sol kept his eyes on Seth's face. Seth didn't look away. The silence stretched out between them, and Sol decided not to break it.

 

Finally Seth said, "What do you want from me?" His voice was as quiet as before but not calm, not calm at all.

 

"It's not what I want from you," Sol said.

 

"I've no patience for riddles, Sol."

 

"Nor do I, not this night," Sol said. "It's not what I want from you. It's what I want for you."

 

Seth leaned back against the counter suddenly, and to Sol he looked like a man who was falling, falling and shocked to find anything there to catch him. "There's no use in this talk," Seth said. "There's no use in it, and no hope."

 

"Doesn't have to be so," Sol said. "Not unless you want it so."

 

Seth straightened up, and when he spoke his eyes were as calm and steady as when he looked at a man over a loaded gun. "All I want is to do no more harm to those I love than I already have." He smiled, quick and cold. "For some men, that might seem no great ambition. But for myself ..."

 

"That's not --"

 

"It is, Sol. It is what it is, and I am what I am, and all I can do is what I am doing."

 

"Haunting your own store like a ghost, that's all you can do? Lurking in the dark and not even daring to speak her name?" Sol threw the words at him but Seth didn't rouse or raise his voice when he spoke again.

 

"Yes," Seth said. "What I am doing is all I can do."

 

"No, it's not," Sol said. He stood up and took a step toward Seth. "No, it's not, you stubborn bastard."

 

"What do you want from me?" Seth said again. "What else can I do?"

 

Sol said, "You can let someone share it with you. You can tell someone else your sorrow, you can let me listen, you can let me offer solace --"

 

"Don't you understand," Seth said, as the fire in his voice finally reached his eyes, "there's not a thing you can do for me. There's no solace for me anywhere." His arm swept out and the candle fell from the counter, leaving them both in darkness.

 

While Seth swore, Sol put an arm out behind himself, feeling for his chair and then falling into it. Then there was light again, first a small spark shining through Seth's fingers and then the small steady glow of the candle. Sol put his hand up to shield his eyes from the flame. When he dropped his hand, Seth was standing over him.

 

"I'm sorry," Seth said. "I did not mean -- I don't deserve it, I know. Your care for me," and he gripped Sol's shoulder, hard, just for a moment. Sol thought suddenly of Trixie's hands, quick and calloused. To look at her no one would think she was capable of comfort, but Sol had reason to know there was a river of tenderness running deep and hidden inside her. She was slow to show it, even to those as hurt as she was herself, unless she thought she was the one who'd done the hurting, unless she'd done the hurt herself without meaning to.

 

"If we all got only what we deserve, this whole world would be weeping," Sol said, and Seth let go of his shoulder and walked away, looking out the door at the quiet street. "All of us, except for the saints and the fools."

 

"I thought you didn't believe in saints," Seth said without turning around. "I know you believe in fools."

 

"Well, fools I've seen with my own eyes," Sol said.

 

"I don't think I want to know what you mean by that," Seth said, and when Sol laughed Seth turned abruptly and said, "What I said before, that you couldn't give me anything, I didn't mean ..."

 

Sol put his hand up again over his eyes, and Seth's voice cut off. Then he said, quietly, "All I want is to do no more harm than I already have."

 

"It's a brave ambition," Sol said. He saw that Seth was watching him carefully. "I mean that truly."

 

"Thank you," Seth said. Sol smiled at him and Seth said, "What I was trying to say, before, what I meant to say was -- I'd be thankful, truly, for any comfort you care to offer. It would be a help to me."

 

Seth was awkward with words, and with silences, but Sol thought there was nothing Seth was so awkward with as a lie. Still, Sol kept smiling. There were those who could take comfort only by giving it to others, and Sol had long ago learned that there was as much grace in accepting a gift as in giving it.

 

"There's a bottle around here somewhere," Sol said, "for purely medicinal purposes, of course." He got up and rummaged through the cabinets, aware of Seth's eyes on him. "And a couple of glasses, too. We're going to drink like civilized folk tonight, because it's a special night, after all. We're not going to wet this baby's head drinking straight from the bottle."

 

As Sol lined two glasses of whiskey up on the counter, Seth walked over and put his hand on Sol's shoulder again. Sol let himself be still as Seth picked up a glass.

 

"To Helena Marie Ellsworth," Seth said.

 

Sol raised his glass. "May she have a pretty face and a happy life."

 

"May she have a friend to offer her comfort," Seth said, his hand still on Sol's shoulder, "even when she's too stubborn to take it."

 

"May she have a friend," Sol said, and they swallowed their whiskey and stood together in the silence.


End file.
